Today I met with Jake, an “Associate Planner” from a wealth management company who gave a presentation on smart financial planning at Active a few weeks ago. Since the words “planning” and “smart” more often pertain to my successful procurement of a sober driver for the evening than my finances, I forgave Jake the motivational quotes and marathon metaphors in his Power Point and took him up on his free employee consultation.

Jake is blonde and about my height. He wears a suit that is awkwardly large on him, as if it belonged to his older brother and his mom is still hoping he’ll grow into it. Jake has a winning smile with a surprisingly genuine quality that he can flash on command. He is a good salesman, and even when you can pinpoint the parts of his presentation that are rehearsed down to the jokes and self-deprecating jabs – “Now this equation – and I don’t pretend to understand the mathematics behind it – it’s over my head ha ha” – you still find something comforting and trustworthy about him. The fact that I openly unveiled to him my less than impressive “investor profile” during our first meeting and he was still eager to schedule a follow up appointment makes me think that he’s also just starting out, hoping to build a client base so he can move onto bigger and better accounts. I find it kind of sweet, like I’m a practice client. Once he makes it big, he’ll never again devote this kind of time to someone who budgets by drinking Bud Light and considers medical studies a brilliant form of extra income.

I do have a small sum of money that I left in the hands of my grandma’s accountant a few years ago when he agreed to manage my funds at the “family rate”. After briefly analyzing the history of my investments and pointing out that they had dropped 25% while I was living in Iowa and refusing to open the account statements that I knew would only confirm that the economy was indeed going to shit, Jake read to me the financial goals he had me prepare prior to our meeting:

“1) Retire comfortably
2) Buy a house
3) Watch my investments grow

So the question is, which of your goals would you like to devote this money to? Are you wanting to put it away for retirement, or buy a house? Because that’s going to help us determine how long-term a plan you need to be investing in.”

I stared at Jake. I had never before heard my hypothetical life plans spoken aloud by a man wearing a suit in a fifth story conference room with very comfortable chairs. They had always just existed in my head as default goals because they were the sort of ambitions a respectable person shot for, not because I had ever realistically contemplated the likelihood of my purchasing a house in San Diego on less than 40K a year. Hearing Jake say them, dry erase marker in hand, poised expectantly in front of his chart scribbled mess of a white board, I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was wearing a hand-me-down t-shirt from my mother with my elementary school mascot on it. I felt like the kids I’d gone to junior high with who were failing all their classes but announced during career week that they planned on being doctors when they grew up.

“Well…I suppose buying a house here isn’t like, uh in the cards for the near future,” I responded.

“Well I’m happy to chat with you about the direction of the San Diego real estate market but yes, I think a better use of this money right now would be setting it aside for retirement,” Jake said kindly. Since you’ll be renting for the rest of your life you fucking useless Poli Sci major, I imagined his inner voice screaming from behind his tense, but still winning smile.

“Now the plan that I seeing as being most lucrative for you wouldn’t be very liquid – you’d be locked in for about fifteen years – but since you don’t have any big purchases you’re looking to make in the near future…”

I had been nodding throughout the entire presentation to hide a level of understanding that I would generously describe as vague, and I nodded more rapidly now, even as drops of sweat unexpectedly burst from every pore of my body and settled on my skin. As he added to his myriad of diagrams, I began to realize that I did actually have a plan for the money that Jake felt if properly allocated could keep me comfortably renting when I was finally able to retire in my late 60s, but would never quite cover the mortgage on a two bedroom shithole in East County.

This money is my freak out fund. It is my quarter life crisis, quit my meaningless job, run away from the daunting finality of adulthood, make nothing of my life on a more exotic continent money. I have never researched my investments before, I have never tracked their progress; I just know that they exist, that even if they tank they will still amount to more than I will ever have in my checking account, and that they can be liquid in 48 hours, just in time to pay for a flight away from all the things that make me feel closer to mediocrity and death.

This was a key moment. Locking in my freak out fund obviously does not preclude my actual freak out and subsequent life choices, but it does make it a significantly more difficult affair. Such a decision would also mark an important emotional shift from the limitless, horizon filled beauty of my youthful, college-era life, to the one way tunnel of security-focused dreariness that I imagine true adulthood to be. “Lock in” is actually a perfect description.

If I chose to deny myself access to my freak out fund until over a decade from now, am I basically telling myself that my best years are over? Should I responsibly save this money for after my emergence from my thirties cocoon as a real adult who has wardrobe choices that do not involve cartoon jaguars? I have always been more a cautious creature of habit than an adventurer prone to wild bouts of spontaneity; should I take the final step toward my natural instinct? Or should I meet you in South America?

Seriously, I’m asking…Jake awaits my response via email on this matter.